On July 31, 1941, Hermann Göring gave a written authorization to Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), to prepare a plan on how to deal with the Jewish population in territories under German control. His plan was called Die Endiösung der Judenfrage or the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. The authorization resulted in Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East), which called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to Siberia for the use of slave labor or to be murdered. Also, the Nazis planned to reduce the Jewish population by thirty million people through starvation called the Hunger Plan.
On January 20, 1942, the plans for the total elimination of the Jewish population in Europe were formalized at the Wannsee Conference. Some were worked to death and the rest were killed either by gas vans or by Einsatzgruppen firing squad. Eventually, killing centers at extermination camps replaced the Einsatzgruppen. The first mass exterminations at Auschwitz began in September 1941, when 900 inmates were killed in the Block II basement using Zyklon B gas. Eventually, the site of the killings was moved to Crematoria I, where 700 victims could be killed at once. Crematoria II, III, IV, and V were built later.
In July 1942, the SS conducted selections. Jews deemed able to work were sent to the right line and admitted into the camp. Any deemed unfit for labor were sent to the left line and gassed right away. The group sent to the left included almost all children, women with small children, all of the elderly, and all of those who were briefly inspected by an SS doctor. Any too young or ill to walk to the gas chambers were transported there on trucks or shot in the head on the spot. Once the victims arrived, they were told to take a “shower”, and the gas chambers were often disguised as showers. Inside the chamber, Zyklon B pellets were dumped onto the Jews through the roof or holes in the side of the chamber. They were dead in twenty minutes.
Auschwitz 